Aria
by XmeowX
Summary: Crossover with Arthurian myth, set in the present day.
1. Once Upon A Time

_Author's Note: _

_Thanks to everyone who reviewed Once More, With Feeling, trying to get it published (touch wood) and still working on the prequel. This is about some of the same characters, around the same time-frame but set in an alternative dimension, so some things are a bit different. Some of the characters and plotlines have been borrowed from FictionPress's "Lebras", who I really need to thank for all the information on Arthurian mythology. _

* * *

Lavender Lane studied her own reflection for the first time in months.

Usually she didn't bother with vanity - what was the point, when she spent all day alone, anyway? - but today, for no particular reason except maybe the sun was shining a little brighter or she was feeling more curious than usual, she decided to luxuriate in front of the mirror and take stock:

The sight that awaited her was not a pleasant one. Back when she was Guinevere, she'd never let herself get in this sort of state. Not that she'd have been allowed to, with court protocol and fussing maids and Arthur, being all snobbish and critical. Still. Her dark-blonde hair hung limp around her like a drowned woman, and dark pebble-eyes stared back. The months of spending every day in front of the computer had taken their tole and the endless chocolate biscuits had clung around her bingo-wings, making her an inverse hour-glass.

She looked like a dead angel.

Turning the computer on, she forced her appearance out of her mind, promising herself that later she'd get out and ride her bike up to the stones or eat a stick of celery or something. MSN came on without being asked, and she dutifully tapped in her password (.celot) half-curious and half out of habit.

It always interested her, the times people were online. In her experience, it was always the most interesting who were online at eleven o'clock on a weekday morning.

Today, however, proved an exception: A couple of the pervs she'd found on some Internet dating site, middle-aged with mind-numbing jobs involving fork-lifts and stacking shelves - and Marianne Warren.

Marianne. Bloody. Warren.

The tea-slurping, chav-loving freak. Still, there was always something going on with her, and listening to her ranting about how absolutely horrible it is to have a guy so madly in love with you he'll go to the extremes just to get you into his bed marginally outweighed talking to Ronald from the Amazon warehouse.

**Your Life Is Your Legend Now:**

_Hey. Shouldn't you be in school?_

**There Are Certain Shades Of Limelight That Can Ruin A Girl's Complexion:**

_Hellooooo! I am. Just got out of PE so I'm in the Independent Learning Centre learning independently. And perving on Robbie_.

Lavender rolled her eyes in spite of herself. Robbie was, to her mind at least, a bit of a prick, and stood for everything that was wrong with Marianne: she had a perfectly okay (admittedly slightly slimy) guy worshipping the ground she walked on but still she couldn't take her eyes off some chavtastic ginger loser, just to make life more difficult and inspire (male, let's face it) sympathy.

**Your Life Is Your Legend Now:**

_Cool. I'm fine, by the way. _

Actually, she wasn't. Her head was throbbing and her throat felt like cotton wool, not that it would have entered Princess Marianne's consciousness to ask, because that would have taken the ability to think about another human being for five seconds. It didn't help that her display picture was of the bitch looking annoyingly glamorous dressed up as that 1950s movie star. Not Marilyn Monroe. The other one, with the husky voice. Laughing her ass off as if to prove to the world how chipper she could pretend to be, all the while harbouring such dark secrets.

Ha. _Princess _Marianne knew jack shit about dark secrets; and if she did she'd probably just tell her stalker so he could "force" (yeah, we all believe you) her into bed, or let Daddy buy her a pony and make it all better.

* * *

Trey cast the runes again, just to make sure.

There was no real need, of course, the meaning was clear enough... but there was always the chance destiny had made some silly little mistake and, actually, nothing big and bad and world-changing was going to happen after all.

The runes lay out in the exact pattern they had before, inanimately screaming _I Told You So_. He scooped them back up, and lay on the bed with his eyes half-shut, obscuring the grey morning light.

He had class that afternoon and no intention of going; Travel and Tourism somehow lost its appeal in the face of an apocolyptic battle against the very nature of evil. He'd dreamed of Camelot again last night:

Not as he remembered it, though, alive with people busy as ants and deafaning with the clatter of conversation and work and laughter - but eerily quiet, except the hum of distant music, as if people were there but just out of reach, and he was following the noise and the beeswax candles as they went out, one by one. And then she was there.

Unable to relive the dream and suddenly desperate to take some kind of action, Trey opened his eyes with the realisation that sometimes, just sometimes, it sucked to be the reincarnation of the most powerful sorcerer in Camelot.

Not that anybody ever remembered Lebras, of course. The second and youngest son of Morganna Le Faye, raised by Nimue and much, much more powerful than that wannabe Merlin.

Of course Mordred got all the fame. Sometimes, he supposed, it pays to be evil.

Unless you were William De Wendenal.

Nobody remembered _him_. Not that anybody would want to - he'd met Eddie twice, and that was enough to decide he was, as one might expect, a wanker. To be fair, The Sheriff Of Nottingham is still a well-enough known pantomime villain, but when people don't know your first name, you really have to reassess how famous you are.

Not that anybody really remembered Marian Dubois, of course, but Trey had never had the heart to tell Marianne this. Maid Marian, as in a feisty red-head who lived up a tree...but not so much Marian Dubois the slightly kitsch housewife.

Not that he'd really gotten the impression she cared much about being famous. Which was sweet and a little short-sighted, given the amount of money you could make claiming to be the reincarnation of someone cool. He'd considered posing as Mordred, on the rare occasion, filling in time segments on _This Morning_and paranormal magazines complaining about Arthur and fat Guin...but in the end he'd chosen self-respect over money.

He'd met her - Marianne, that was - about a year ago, completely by accident, and somehow the subject of reincarnation had come up. He disliked dealing with witches, but he made an exception for her.

And now she part of This. He wasn't sure how exactly, or even what This was, but from the moment he'd had the first dream, he'd known she was going to be involved somehow.

Her and Guin and someone who connected them both.

Maybe the Powers That Be or God or whoever it was writing the rules thought they'd be some irony to that - joining two legends together. Or maybe it was just a coninky dink and they were just using whoever turned up.

* * *

Phillip Ashley slid the fifty pence piece over the counter, trying to look as if it really was just a coin and not a stroke of luck that had bought him the only thing he was likely to consume that day, which took the form of very hot, very sweet tea.

50p for a brew was bloody extortionate, but he was glad to be back in the city.

Eight centuries and it hadn't changed much, still segregated, rich and poor. Even in the bus station, that much was obvious. Or maybe being Robin Hood's ex-stepson made you more aware of these things. Anyway, after the incident with a trick wanting to aphixiate him, anywhere was better than Manchester. For now, at least.

A billboard advertising bread caught his deshevelled reflection, and he tried to imagine what mama would say. And then he reminded himself that she wouldn't say anything, because Marian Dubois had been dead for hundreds of years, and even if she was reincarnated the chances of her knowing anything about it were a million to one. Still. Right now, he'd kill for chicken soup and a hug and to be told off for not washing his hands, and that wasn't an exaggeration.

Trudging out onto the narrow, cobbled streets he relaxed a fraction of an inch.

Being homeless was generally not fun no matter where you were, but at least Nottingham felt homely.

* * *

Eddie Sheriffs removed the bag of frozen peas from his face and assessed the damage: the skin underneath his right eye was purple and swollen. Unfortunately, being a powerful pyschic hadn't helped him percieve Robbie's next move would be to swing his fist right into his face, and now a good quarter of his face looked like blackberry crumble.

The school had tried to talk him into pressing charges, but he hadn't. Ruining The Chavster's life was too much fun for the criminal justice system to bother with, especially when he could do it so well himself. Anyway, taxpayers shouldn't have to pay for people like that to have an all-expenses-paid spa resort holiday masquerading as Juvinille Detention.

When he was in charge of law and order, hanging fixed people like Robbie right up. He smiled at the memory of the day he finally arrested Robert... the sweet, sweet victory of kicking the arrogance right out of him.

"Ouch. That looks nasty."

Eddie jumped, realised it was a woman's voice, and retained composure, feeling like a royal twat. "Yeah." Whoever it was, there was no reflection in the mirror.

He turned round, and saw the kind of woman he would have, under normal circumstances, found hot - long, pure-black hair to her waist with eyes to match, red lips, silky olden-timey white dress semi-revealing fairly big tits. It wasn't the first ghost he'd ever seen, but she was the first he'd ever thought about screwing.

"Let me." With a loose wave of her wrist, the bruise - and the throbbing pain that went along with it - vanished.

"...Thanks." Eddie was close to shitting himself, but his better judegment reminded him that this was no excuse for bad manners.

"How rude of me! I haven't even introduced myself, have I? Morganna Le Faye."


	2. Once More With Feeling, Again

"My dad should be home any minute."

It wasn't that Marianne didn't like her Uncle Ritchie. She liked him very much. He had visited a thousand places she'd only ever seen on TV - Japan and South America and Beijing - and could tell a story on every single person he'd met there. And he'd forgotten more about business than most people would ever learn. And he always smelt very pleasantly of a mixture of leather, mint and aftershave that comforted her in some subliminal way she didn't really comprehend. And he had mastered his cigarette addiction by chewing gum, endlessly - as soon as one piece lost its flavour the next would go straight in, as if he was on a constant loop of needless mastication.

But most of all she liked that he remembered to pop a fifty-pound-note into the birthday card he sent her every year, even if he got the age wrong.

It was just that... well. As far as ex-kings who lead an entire crusade went, he was a little bit dull.

"The club, by the way, is doing brilliantly. You wouldn't believe the prices tourists will pay for a pint of real ale."

Marianne probably wouldn't. But neither would she have cared much either, except that her on/off sort-of boyfriend Robbie was illegally working there part time, and it made sense that if the club was doing well he'd probably do well too, and then he wouldn't have to commit crime anymore and everything would be okay again. She understood that much about economics, at least. She smiled very broadly, looking just as perkily interested as she could. "Oh?"

"Oh yeah. Well, actually, no. The club is a dive, we only get the lower end in there - business trippers and history boffins and such. But at some of the pubs I have a stake in, well. Tenner a pint."

Marianne tried very hard to look impressed.

"My assistant is leaving, though. To work in coats."

If anything could have cheered her up, it was that sentence - "Coats?"

Despite herself, she imagined some mousy blonde girl sitting at a desk typing away in a fur-trimmed Eskimo overcoat.

"Expensive couture ones. Silly girl, in this economic climate; people will always want entertainment, but come the downturn nobody will be rushing out to buy a three hundred pound rag when they could get a copy - in what's that shop?"

"Primark." She knew he knew perfectly well what he'd meant; his children were invariably dressed head-to-foot in discount clothing. Much as Ritchie liked to pretend he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was an east-end barrow boy made good and everybody knew it - and even if they didn't, it was obvious from his accent and small mannerisms that betrayed him as New Money.

If there was anything Marianne had a natural talent for (other than her art, ability to make a guy come at ten paces and skills as an empathic kitchen witch) it was dividing the world into New Money and Old Money. She supposed this came from her past life, as Lady Marian Dubois (nee Fitzwarren), society bitch and wife of the most infamous outlaw of the medieval period. Amongst other things.

"You know, I predict in a year, two at the most, this country is heading for recession."

She fought against herself to hold her tongue - just this once - quietly nod and smile. There was no need to say it. If she didn't say it they'd be no problem. But before she could stop herself the words were out and the damage was done -

"Well. That's capitalism for you."

She may as well have suggested bloody revolution. The atmosphere in the otherwise empty room become thick with a million unspoken words - Ritchie drew a breath, and Marianne dreaded the impending, damning speech that was about to devour her evening -

"Oh, you let Ritchie in! Good good!"

In her sixteen years of life, Marianne had never yet been so glad to be rescued by her father.

"Hey, dad. I was actually just going to bed. Night, Uncle Ritchie. Daddy."

***********************************

* * *

Her head was a spinning world of darkness and unconnected words and pictures that meant nothing to her, and every cell in her body was saying_ no, no, forbidden, not right, no_.

"It hurts..."

"Fight the pain."

The confusing, half-dazed darkness threatened to consume her, but she went in deeper, deeper, spinning her into something deeper and darker than she could have imagined. Silence, even deeper and darker - and she realised she had fallen straight into the arms of death.

The pain subsiding, the words around her suddenly clicked neatly into place as if they had always made that kind of sense, and she saw as if it was her own mind:

A girl - a girl it took a moment to recognise as herself, but herself in a dress that placed her firmly in the late twelfth century - in the arms of a ginger boy. The scene was one she remembered well; kissing Rob goodbye the day before her wedding. But now she was seeing it not as she always had, through her own eyes and with love and tenderness more beautiful than anything she had ever known - but as something twisted and wrong and cruel, and with rising anger. She wanted to drag herself away and knock some sense into the stupid bitch, or hit Rob and keep on hitting...

"Open your eyes."

Shaken back into reality, her reality, it took a moment to readjust to what was and what wasn't. And what wasn't her memory, but the boy sitting beside her, who was Eddie. Who used to be William De Wendenal, sheriff of Nottingham, her ex-husband. Who was trying to teach her the basics of psychicism, something it turned out she had very little natural applitude for.

"I saw me. I mean...me and Rob. But from your per-"

"I know. You were getting in too deep, you're not ready yet. Next time, maybe."

Marianne pouted. She knew she was getting good enough to see anything she wanted. And now she could even see what Eddie had been blocking, and he was naturally pyscic. She felt like hitting a happy medium, but restrained herself.

"You're never going to guess who I spoke to last night."

She wasn't much in the mood to guess at anything - she wanted to see the rest of the memory, to finally figure out who had grassed on her about being with Rob. "The tooth fairy?"

"Morganna Le Faye."

"Uh-huh."


End file.
